NEW YORK — New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio misused his security detail to assist his ill-fated presidential campaign and ferry his children around, according to a probe by the city Department of Investigation.
DOI released a report Thursday morning detailing a slew of instances where the mayor’s NYPD detail was used inappropriately for political or personal purposes.
Investigators said their probe uncovered “potential violations of the New York City Conflicts of Interest Law, lapses in best practices, corruption vulnerabilities, and inefficient uses of public resources.”The NYPD detail assigned to de Blasio traveled with him around the country, transporting him while he was campaigning for president in 2019, even though city rules have strict limits about the use of official vehicles for political travel in or near New York City.
NYPD vehicles were also used to transport campaign staffers, the investigation found.
The NYPD spent $319,794 on travel costs for de Blasio’s security detail outside New York — shelling out for flights, hotels, rental cars, gas, and meals. Neither de Blasio personally nor his campaign have paid the money back. The figure accounts for only travel costs, not overtime and salaries paid to detectives during the campaign trips.
Multiple cops on the detail and an NYPD sprinter van were used to assist de Blasio’s daughter, Chiara, when she moved from a Sunset Park apartment back in with her parents at Gracie Mansion. One detective helped move a futon belonging to the first daughter, according to the report.
The detail also drove Dante de Blasio back and forth to Yale University on several occasions without the mayor or his wife, Chirlane McCray, present, investigators found.
And for several months in 2019 and 2020, after Dante had graduated college and moved back to Gracie Mansion, they drove him every day to work in Brooklyn.DOI also charged that the top investigator in charge of the mayor’s detail “actively obstructed and sought to thwart this investigation, frustrating DOI’s efforts to learn the full facts regarding these allegations.”
De Blasio’s press secretary blasted the report in a statement Thursday.
“Intelligence and security experts should decide how to keep the mayor and his family safe, not civilian investigators,” spokesperson Danielle Filson said.
“This unprofessional report purports to do the NYPD’s job for them, but with none of the relevant expertise — and without even interviewing the official who heads intelligence for the City," she said. "As a result, we are left with an inaccurate report, based on illegitimate assumptions and a naïve view of the complex security challenges facing elected officials today.”